page_title: USS Shangri-La
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: USS Shangri-La / Service history / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La (CVS-38) cruises toward Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, on 11 February 1970. Shangri-La was working up for her last deployment before her decomissioning. Her last cruise, with assigned Carrier Air Wing 8 (CVW-8), was to Vietnam and the Western Pacific from 5 March to 17 December 1970. Although nominally redesignated as an anti-submarine carrier (CVS) on 30 June 1969, the Shang still operated as an attack carrier (CVA).
context_page_description: USS Shangri-La was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers completed during or shortly after World War II for the United States Navy.
  Commissioned in 1944 and named after the mythical paradise of the same name, Shangri-La participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II, earning two battle stars. Like many of her sister ships, she was decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, but was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s, and redesignated as an attack carrier. She operated in both the Pacific and Atlantic / Mediterranean for several years, and late in her career was redesignated as an anti-submarine carrier. She earned three battle stars for service in the Vietnam War.
  Shangri-La was decommissioned in 1971 and sold for scrap in 1988.
context_section_description: Upon her return, Shangri-La began normal operations out of San Diego, primarily engaged in pilot carrier landing qualifications. In May 1946, she sailed for the Central Pacific to participate in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests conducted at Bikini Atoll. Following this, she made a brief training cruise to Pearl Harbor, then wintered at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. In March 1947, she deployed again, calling at Pearl Harbor and Sydney, Australia. When she returned to the United States, Shangri-La was decommissioned and placed in the Reserve Fleet at San Francisco on 7 November 1947.
  Shangri-La recommissioned on 10 May 1951, Captain Francis L. Busey in command. For the next year, she conducted training and readiness operations out of Boston, Massachusetts. Reclassified as an attack carrier (CVA-38) in 1952, she returned to Puget Sound that fall and decommissioned again on 14 November, this time for modernization at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. During the next two years, she received an angled flight deck and twin steam catapults, and her aircraft elevators and arresting gear were overhauled. At a cost of approximately $7 million, she was virtually a new ship when she commissioned for the third time on 10 January 1955, Captain Roscoe L. Newman commanding; she was the second (after CVA-36 Antietam) operational U.S. carrier with an angled flight deck. She conducted intensive fleet training for the remainder of 1955, then deployed to the Far East on 5 January 1956. Until 1960, she alternated western Pacific cruises with operations out of San Diego. On 16 March 1960, she put to sea from San Diego en route to her new home port, Mayport, Florida. She entered Mayport after visits to Callao, Peru; Valparaíso, Chile; Port of Spain, Trinidad; Bayonne, New Jersey; and Norfolk, Virginia.
  After six weeks of underway training in the local operating area around Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, she embarked upon her first Atlantic deployment, a NATO exercise followed by liberty in Southampton, England. Almost immediately after her return to Mayport, Shangri-La was ordered back to sea—this time to the Caribbean in response to trouble in Guatemala and Nicaragua. She returned to Mayport on 25 November and remained in port for more than two months.
  Between 1961 and 1970, Shangri-La alternated between deployments to the Mediterranean and operations in the western Atlantic, out of Mayport. She sailed east for her first tour of duty with the 6th Fleet on 2 February 1961. She returned to the United States that fall and entered the New York Naval Shipyard. Back in Mayport by the beginning of 1962, Shangri-La stood out again for the Mediterranean on 7 February. After about six months of cruising with the 6th Fleet, she departed the Mediterranean in mid-August and arrived in Mayport on 28 August.
  Following a month's stay at her home port, the aircraft carrier headed for New York and a major overhaul. Shangri-La was modified extensively during her stay in the yard. Four of her 5 in (127 mm) mounts were removed, but she received a new air search and height finding radar and a new arrester system. In addition, much of her electrical and engineering equipment was renovated. After sea trials and visits to Bayonne and Norfolk, Shangri-La returned to Mayport for a week in late March 1963; then put to sea for operations in the Caribbean. Eight months of similar duty followed before Shangri-La weighed anchor for another deployment. On 1 October 1963, she headed back to the 6th Fleet for a seven-month tour.
caption: Shangri-La in 1970 on her last deployment
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